


cheers to the second best

by eat_crow



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mutual Pining, Unrequited Love, bc they deserved better!, bonding because your crushes passed you both up for the same dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eat_crow/pseuds/eat_crow
Summary: Secrets make for strange bedfellows, but you know what else does? When the loves of your lives reject your affections to pursue the same man.An unconventional friendship culminating in an unconventional relationship.
Relationships: Gwaine/Lancelot (Merlin), Gwen & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 81





	cheers to the second best

**Author's Note:**

> i can't explain myself any more than you can except for the fact that gwaine and lance got ignored, in their own ways, for the same motherfucker, and that is crazy, and i think they would have bonded and become friends over it. wdym that's not canon?
> 
> anyway here's my 4k of lancelot pining over gwaine

It comes about, as most things do, with Gwaine speaking out of turn.

"I don't get it," he says, and Lancelot's attention is drawn away from his armour to his friend, and in turn where Gwaine stares. 

Arthur and Merlin bicker on the training field. The two spit rapid fire insults at each other, and Lancelot can't even imagine what it's about this time. Arthur swings his sword in a lazy arc at Merlin's side and Merlin parries the blow easily with his shield. Arthur presses the back of his wrist to his mouth to hide his half smile and Merlin shoves at him. Arthur raises his eyebrows at the challenge and kicks forward. The sole of his boot makes a solid connection with Merlin's shield and throws him to the ground. 

Merlin glares up at him, leaning back on his elbows, and says something with a sarcastic smile. He rejects the hand Arthur offers him and rises without help, dusting himself off, and ignores the king's taunts as he picks up discarded swords and shields off the field. When Arthur gives up on regaining Merlin's attention and turns away he doesn't catch the prolonged stare Merlin gives his back, long fingers worrying the leather straps on the shield in his hands.

Lancelot sighs through his nose as he watches their song and dance. He doesn't mean to take Gwaine's bait, but it overwhelms him.

"What don't you understand?" He already knows, but he daren't speak out of turn like Gwaine does so freely.

They watch Merlin pick up the field with the help of squires and servants. Arthur stands to the side and criticizes Merlin at every step, and Merlin doesn't look up from his task when he answers with his own dismissing barbs. Arthur smiles and snickers at one in particular, but when Merlin looks over his shoulder he schools his face back into a frown and snaps at him.

"What goes on in his head," Gwaine says, a heated edge to his voice, "it's not as if he can pine his whole life." He tenses then, realizing what he's said aloud. He looks to Lancelot with wide eyes, but it's Lancelot who speaks next.

"You know, then?" He says.

" _ You _ do?"

"I know more about Merlin than some ever will," he answers simply, and Gwaine doesn't ask him to clarify.

"How did you find out?" He asks. Lancelot removes his own vambraces.

"A blind man could see it," Lancelot says. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees. "No one, not even someone as selfless as Merlin, does such things unless blinded by love. His loyalty is…" he looks away, "it's commendable."

"It's foolish," Gwaine corrects. "Arthur doesn't respect him. Doesn't even look at him, not the way he should. Merlin deserves better."

" _ Someone _ better?" Lancelot asks with a smile.

"Perhaps," Gwaine says, and watches Merlin. His lips press together, and he tucks his chin to his chest. "I would choose him," he says. "Over a thousand lifetimes. Over a thousand men. It would be him." He laughs and looks back to Lancelot. "And he would turn around and choose Arthur, every time."

"And yet the King does not appreciate the love he is given so freely," he says, "and he never will."

"You almost sound bitter."

"Well, sir Gwaine," he says, "you are not the only one who lost a love to the King." He claps Gwaine on the back and rises from the bench to finish undressing in the armory.

  
  


“Who was it?” Gwaine asks him, pressed up into his space and heavy with the ale that lingers on his breath. Lancelot, pleasantly tipsy from their shared night at the tavern, laughs and raises his eyebrows in question. “Your  _ love _ ,” and he says it like a poem he doesn’t care for, “who was it?” 

He’s just drunk enough that the thought of her doesn’t hurt so terribly, and he takes a long breath through his nose and looks to Gwaine with a hapless smile.

“The moon itself,” he says. “She is the air in my lungs, and my last breath will be her name on my lips.” He takes a sip of wine. “Guinevere.” Gwaine gets caught between a laugh and a gasp and chokes.

“The Queen to be?” He asks in a stage whisper, and settles on a hearty laugh with his hand slapped over his chest. “Oh, you poor soul. At least I have a chance.” Lancelot hums into the brim of his cup.

“You’re a bigger fool than I believed if you still have hope.”

“What you call hope, I call confidence.” Gwaine smiles with teeth that are far too straight for someone with such an annoying demeanor. “Why him, d’you think?” He asks, and gestures to Arthur.

He sits at a table across the tavern. The only person with him is Merlin, who sips from a tankard of mead to hide the brilliant smile on his lips as Arthur speaks. Merlin quirks his eyebrow and says something with a tilt of his head to punctuate whatever cutting remark he has to say. Arthur barks a surprised laugh, like after all these years he’s still shocked that he finds Merlin as funny as he does. It makes Merlin huff a little chuckle himself.

They stare at each other for an almost uncomfortable length of time. They barely blink. Lancelot can see from across the room they're staring intently at each other's mouths, and he can feel the tension from where he is. They both lean forward, only the barest movement.

Then Arthur’s lips move as he says something sly and purposefully obnoxious, and a grin stretches Merlin’s face, and they look away.

“His stellar personality, clearly,” Lancelot says, and Gwaine hums and taps his index to his chin as he pretends to think.

“His manners.”

“That well certainly never runs dry,” he says. Gwaine’s head falls back as he laughs. He leans into Lancelot’s side, and Lancelot wraps his arm around his shoulders and pats his arm, a drunken staccato. He raises his cup. “May your next love not fancy the King.” Gwaine clinks his tankard to Lancelot’s cup.

“And may they be cheap.”

Lancelot shoves him away as Gwaine laughs.

  
  


Guinevere laughs and leans in her saddle as Arthur speaks to her. She hangs on each word. When she answers him he listens with rapt attention, adoration in every line of his face. The love comes off them in waves, warmer than a campfire.

Lancelot looks away from it. He stares hard into the treeline, pretending he can't hear them either.

Something sharp pokes his arm and he flinches. His entire body yanks sideways to see the offender.

It's Gwaine, sword in hand, looking him up and down and grinning. Lancelot relaxes. He quirks an eyebrow.

Gwaine gives a pointed look to the King and to Guinevere, and Lancelot's heart sinks as he's forced to watch. Gwaine pokes him again to catch his attention. He makes a gagging noise.

To his own surprise, Lancelot bursts into laughter.

Everyone turns to him. Heat blooms in his cheeks and up into his ears. He clears his throat.

"Sorry," he says. "For the first time in his life, Gwaine said something funny." Their patrol chuckles.

"Wow," Gwaine says. "I'm an endless source of entertainment."

"No one can say we ever grow tired of watching you embarrass yourself, Gwaine," Arthur chips in. Gwaine gives an exaggerated roll of the eyes. Lancelot looks between them, a flicker of annoyance rising from god knows where.

"I'm certainly glad to have you around," he says. Gwaine turns to him, eyebrows raised in surprise, and Lancelot gives him a kind smile. Gwaine rolls his shoulders, fluffing up at the praise.

"Thank you," he says. Lancelot presses his lips together and nods. "Finally someone with a little sense."

"Don't push it."

  
  


And so it begins. Lancelot cannot fathom as to why, and he cannot see why it didn't do so sooner, either. 

Gwaine is obnoxious, and loud, and annoying in all the right ways. He fills the air with sound both wanted and unwanted, but whether he's the butt of the joke or not he spreads laughter everywhere he goes. And in his quiet moments there is a humility to him, a wisdom well beyond his years, that makes you want to lean in and listen to every tale he tells of adventure and love. He may just be one of the smartest people Lancelot has ever met, which he remembers with amusement when he catches Gwaine trying to impress the courtier women by walking alongside them on his hands - and places his hand right into an unseen pile of horse manure.

He doesn't know why Merlin would ever choose Arthur over him. Then he catches the two looking at each other with an intensity that makes the sun seem dim, the easy way they play off one another, the blindness to anything but each other, and he understands. He wonders if they do.

"Bed, wed, behead," Gwaine tells him, slumped against Lancelot's headboard, "Guinevere, Arthur, and myself."

Lancelot clicks his tongue, tapping the rag he's using to polish his sword against his knee.

"Wed Guinevere," he says.

"Obviously."

"Bed Arthur," he continues, "just to see what all the  _ damned _ fuss is about with that man."

"Respectable."

"And behead you." He flashes a teasing smile that Gwaine laughs along to. He returns to his work, but pauses. "What about you? Merlin, Arthur, and myself."

"The same," Gwaine says through a sigh. "Though I don't think I'd bed Arthur. It'd be too gratifying for him." Lancelot snorts.

"So you'd bed me?"

Gwaine watches him for a moment. His eyes flick down to Lancelot's lips, tracing his cupid's bow. Lancelot holds the rag tighter in his hand as he tries to keep from doing the same.

Gwaine clasps his hands atop his head.

"I'd behead you both. Less competition." He grins, and Lancelot rolls his eyes. He shakes out his rag and starts up again.

  
  


"This doesn't mean anything," Lancelot says, still out of breath, leaning his head back against the wall, his tunic askew and his trousers pulled up but left untied. Gwaine, sitting next to him and equally unkempt, shakes his head.

"Of course not," he says. 

Bandits. They ambushed from the hills, swords drawn and murder in their eyes. The knights scrambled to defend themselves from the attack. Merlin disappeared to do his work from the shadows, Arthur led the charge, and Gwaine and Lancelot were left somewhere in the middle.

Lancelot saved Gwaine's life.

Maybe it was adrenaline, or gratitude, or the rush of mortality. When the knights left the armory, remarking on how lucky it was a tree felled itself on a handful of bandits, Gwaine was on him. He was pushing Lancelot against the wall and Lancelot was pulling him closer, all hands and lips and tongues. 

"This isn't going to happen again," Lancelot says.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Gwaine answers. He gives Lancelot an easy grin and winks, but he doesn't move.

Gwaine's collarbone is glistening with sweat and Lancelot wants to lean over and run his tongue up his neck.

With a muttered swear, he does.

  
  


It is not the last time it happens. Neither is the third, the fifth, the ninth. They aren't done by the time they lose count, either. They're shoving each other into alcoves, hiding under stairways, excusing themselves early from dinners and banquets.

The littlest things set him off, like the way Gwaine's tunic dips between his shoulder blades, how his hair sticks to the base of his neck during training, the way he looks Lancelot up and down with a hunger in his eyes that Lancelot knows has been possessed by himself.

It's a good distraction from Guinevere.

Such a good distraction, in fact, that he hasn't thought of Guinevere in weeks.

Gwaine's hand is buried in his hair, kneeling over him with one leg between Lancelot's. The only sound in Lancelot's chambers is that of their lips together. He doesn't know why they're kissing. They're done for the night, they have been. But there's something addicting about it, pulling Gwaine in with a hand on the back of his neck, sucking on his lower lip, Gwaine's tongue against his own. Every time they part he's overwhelmed by the desire to have  _ more _ of it. Gwaine is more than happy to humor him.

"Your chambers are awfully far away," he remarks, when Gwaine is kissing down his jaw. He scrapes his teeth against the junction of Lancelot's jaw and neck and he bites back a moan. Maybe they aren't done.

"I could always stay," he breathes against his neck. Lancelot slides his hand up Gwaine's thigh to his hip where he squeezes before moving to tug his trouser laces open for the second time that night.

"A grand idea," he says.

Maybe they fall asleep in the same bed. Maybe it's a little too small for two grown men, and Lancelot is pressed up against Gwaine's back, his arm wrapped around his chest, his chin tucked over his shoulder. Maybe Gwaine's hand is resting over his own. Maybe that morning he breathes in deep and lets himself be so surrounded by Gwaine that it suffocates him.

It doesn't mean anything.

  
  


Gwaine is in his chambers more often than he isn't. His visits are never quick, hours of talking and joking interspersed with carnal desire. They ride next to each other on patrols, lay their bed rolls next to each other on quests and hunting trips, they huddle together at the tavern. He's alone plenty, but for the first time in years he's never once  _ lonely _ . It's a nice feeling, a comfortable one.

Arthur comes up to him after training, awkward as he always is with Lancelot. Lancelot doesn't think he has the capacity to be truly resentful, but if he does, it's all but gone now. He can't place why, but that jealous pit in his stomach no longer claws at him when Arthur is around. He's started to appreciate him as a person, now, and doesn't find him to be anything less than agreeable.

Arthur puts his hand on Lancelot's shoulder. Lancelot looks up at him with a confused quirk of his eyebrow.

"I never thought that…" he clears his throat and scratches the back of his head. "I mean, you're the last people... that I would expect, you know. But…" he gives Lancelot's shoulder a squeeze, "I'm glad you're… I'm happy that you're happy."

"My lord?" Lancelot asks, smiling to be polite. Arthur looks between his eyes.

"I know it's not my place to give either of you my blessing," he says, "but it's good you've found each other."

"... Who?" Lancelot asks, looking out over the training field. His eyes linger on Gwaine, who's half involved in a conversation with Merlin as he wipes sweat from his neck with the hem of his shirt. He looks good today. He looks good every day. Gwaine catches him staring and jerks his chin up in a nod, giving him a sly smile. Lancelot's skin heats.

"Gwaine…?" Arthur says. He turns at the waist to seek out Gwaine as well, but he's already on his way out with a pat to Merlin's chest as he walks past. Lancelot almost laughs.

" _ Gwaine? _ " He asks. "My lord… I'm afraid you've come to the wrong conclusion. There's nothing between us." Arthur gives a solemn nod.

"I understand that you may not wish to discuss it openly, but trust that you have my support--"

"There's nothing to support," he says, forgetting his station in interrupting the king. Gwaine would be proud. "We're simply friends. Barely friends, even."

He knows it's a lie when he says it, but it really  _ isn't _ any of Arthur's business, and he's not remorseful.

"Oh," Arthur says, casting a dubious look at the ground. He rests his hands on his hips. "Well… then. Okay. Okay." He claps Lancelot on the arm. "Have a good night."

Gwaine comes into his chambers that night with a flagon of wine hidden behind his back. They drink, and laugh, and pull off each other's clothes, and with every sharp breath and roll of the hips Lancelot tries to stop thinking about  _ it's good you've found each other. _

  
  


He can't forget it. He can't stop thinking about it, asking himself what he's done for Arthur to assume such a thing.

He watches Gwaine with a microscope, and watches how everyone else watches him too. He listens to every word he says, and everything said to him. Gwaine is a man most underestimated. His humor, his wit, his blinding loyalty, all unnoticed. It's to be expected, really. The knights hadn't seen his eyes rolled back or the way his left leg shakes when he finishes, either. It isn't  _ strange _ .

Completely by accident, he watches Guinevere. Her round cheeks and kind eyes and her dignified way of moving through the world that were so magnetic to him, sometime ago. Where he used to have to force his eyes away for fear of disrespect, it barely takes moments for him to avert his eyes from lack of interest - boredom, almost - and he catches himself looking back to Gwaine.

And then it hits.

_ Oh. _

  
  


Lancelot bites his lower lip until it bleeds, and then he bites it some more. He watches Gwaine at the banquet, laughing and making an ass of himself, with his arms crossed and his eyebrows furrowed together. He isn't angry, though he knows he looks it. One thought swirls and swirls inside his mind.

What if Gwaine doesn't feel the same?

They're having fun together, nothing more. Gwaine could still have feelings for Merlin. He could even be messing around someone else. It's not like they ever discussed their arrangement. Lancelot doesn't know how he'd have  _ time _ for them, considering, but he doesn't doubt it's possible.

Sick of his own self doubt, he crosses the room to his friend. He looks past the way his smile brightens when his eyes land on Lancelot and how he just barely holds Lancelot's wrist when he's close. He dips his head to be subtle and quietly informs Gwaine he plans to be alone and stay alone for the night. He ignores Gwaine's dismayed  _ oh, alright _ and goes off to his chambers to sulk alone.

  
  


"You're avoiding me," Gwaine says, some days later. He's ambushed him in the armory while he sharpens his sword. Lancelot glances about. They're alone.

"Don't be ridiculous. Why would I be avoiding you?"

"You tell me."

Lancelot lets his hand go slack and his sword rests against the inside of his thigh. He bites his lower lip, bruised and sore from a week of lamenting.

"I can't explain something I'm not doing," he says, and Gwaine rolls his eyes. He crosses the room towards the exit, and Lancelot relaxes for a moment, thinking Gwaine will finally get out of his hair. Then there's a clatter as a weapon is removed from a rack, and Gwaine is returning with a sword in his hand. He tucks it underneath his arm as he pulls off his glove. He tosses it to Lancelot's feet. Lancelot licks his teeth. "What the hell are you doing."

"Pick it up," he says, completely aloof. He leans against a post. Lancelot gives him a level look.

"I'm not fighting you to the death. You're being an idiot." 

"Not to the death. Just until you've decided you've had enough."

"Or you," Lancelot answers, his eyes narrowed, and Gwaine snorts as if it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard.

"If I win you'll tell me what's got your corset in a twist. If by some odd chance I lose I'll never ask about it again." He claps. "Pick it up."

Lancelot, spurred on more-so by the implication that Gwaine considers himself leagues ahead of him than a true desire to keep his secret, bends, picks up the glove, and throws it at Gwaine's chest.

"When and where?"

"Here and now."

Then Gwaine slips on the glove, tosses the sword into his own hand, twirls it, and sinks into a fighting stance. Lancelot glares and rises.

Lancelot strikes the first blow.

He brings his sword down over Gwaine's head, and Gwaine raises his sword to parry. Before he can recover Gwaine kicks the side of Lancelot's knee, and when he goes down Gwaine holds his sword to the side of his neck. Lancelot bats the blade away with his sword and jumps back up on his good leg. He forces Gwaine backward with a sharp jab of his sword. Gwaine takes a big step back, ducks behind a rack of halberds, and when Lancelot turns to corner him at the other end of the rack he comes up from behind and jabs him square in the back.

His frustration building, Lancelot turns on his heel, the flat side of his sword turned to smack Gwaine in the face. Gwaine yelps when the metal whips his cheek, a welt rising, and glances between the sword and Lancelot with dark eyes. He steps into a swipe of his sword on Lancelot's right side. Lancelot parries, pushes him back again.

Lancelot herds him with each blow and step, even his parries cutting off escape routes. Gwaine is clever, but Lancelot is no stranger to fighting dirty. He hooks his sword into a rack of maces and topples it over. He steps forward quickly and in Gwaine's haste to back away he trips over the fallen rack. He lands hard on his back.

Lancelot presses the tip of his blade to his neck, harmless but ever present. He gives a pointed look to Gwaine's sword, which is promptly dropped. Lancelot relaxes his own sword to his side. Gwaine props himself up on his elbows, rage drawing his eyebrows together.

"Why won't you just tell me what's wrong!?" he asks.

"Why are you so  _ concerned _ about it!?" Lancelot asks back.

"Because I'm your friend!"

"Well," and the words are coming out before he can stop them, "what if I want more than that!?"

Gwaine stops. The room is suddenly far too quiet. Lancelot can hear his own heart beat in his ears.

"What?"

"I--" Lancelot turns away, scrubbing his face with his hand. "God  _ dammit _ , Gwaine! You're so-- You're so  _ annoying! _ " He curls his fingers, making a choking motion. "No one gets under my skin like you! It's disgusting!" Gwaine watches him, alarmingly calm. Lancelot takes a deep breath and runs his hand through his hair. He points his sword at Gwaine's throat once again. "I'm going to say something stupid, and if you laugh, I'll cut your throat out."

"Deal," Gwaine says quizzically, eyes steady.

"I'm--" he licks his lips and looks away, then looks back. "You are the most idiotic brilliant person I've ever met. You're somehow funny and frustrating all at once. Your kindness and your loyalty impresses me almost as much as your ability to get yourself into the worst situations possible, without fail. You annoy me to no end, yet you-- you occupy my every thought, and all I want to do is spend each waking moment by your side. Sir Gwaine, I am…  _ somehow _ , so deeply in love with you I cannot tell the night from the day." He lowers his sword and pokes Gwaine in the chest. "Now go ahead. Tell me you're still in love with Merlin so I can forget about this."

"Lance…" he breathes, his eyes wide and watery. He reaches out his hand. "Help me up. I'm not saying this on the ground." Lancelot hefts him to his feet. He stumbles, holds on to Lancelot by his forearm. He doesn't let go when he's caught his balance. He looks Lancelot in the eyes, not even a foot away. "You're a moron."

"That's what you had to say?" He asks, his gaze darkening.

"Well, you were being rude, I thought it was my turn," Gwaine snaps, and Lancelot raises his hand in surrender. "You are a moron," he repeats, "for not telling me." Lancelot bites his tongue. "You're my friend. Even if I didn't feel the same, the last thing I would have done is  _ judged _ you. What do you take me for?" Lancelot's mind goes blank.

"What do you mean  _ if _ you didn't?" He asks. Gwaine's lips twitch.

"Come on, now. I'd be blind not to see what was in front of me. You're the most kind, considerate, noble man I've ever met." Lancelot takes in a long, withering breath. He searches Gwaine's eyes, desperate to find a lie within because if this is a cruel joke he'd rather discover it himself than have Gwaine pull the rug out from under him. But Gwaine isn't that kind of man, and his hazel eyes are soft and honest.

"What about Merlin?" Gwaine rubs his forearm with his thumb, raising a teasing eyebrow.

"What about Guinevere?"

They stand still for a moment, staring each other down. Lancelot tightens his grip around the hilt of his sword.

"I'm going to kiss you now."

Gwaine laughs, already reaching up to cup Lancelot's face when he leans in.

  
  


Gwaine takes up permanent residence in his chambers. They don't bother with a bigger bed.

**Author's Note:**

> if you read this far i hope you liked it and thank you so much!!
> 
> catch me on tumblr @ [sterlingdylan](https://sterlingdylan.tumblr.com/)


End file.
